Dislocating peripheries to the center: A tecnologia social reinventing repertoires and territories

Abstract

Although social innovation has gained increasing importance in recent decades due to its promise of promoting social change, critical scholars have identified a number of gray areas, notably numerous perspectives that fail to deeply question the conditions that maintain social inequalities and exclusion, and that are marked by the absence of the voices of those living in the so-called “peripheries.” Through the example of The Agency, we propose an alternative to hegemonic ways of understanding social innovation, one based on the Latin American concept of tecnologia social, which embodies a decolonial view. We make three contributions to the social innovation literature, thereby enriching the North-South debate. First, we illustrate a process of sociotechnical reconfiguration—an interplay of methodological tools, artifacts and discourses—which is central to the conception and implementation of a tecnologia social. Second, we show how a tecnologia social operates through a cumulative layering process of decolonizing the imaginary, challenging the colonial relationship between center/periphery and positioning deprived young people as actors who reinvent their repertoires and territories. Third, we introduce a debate linking the anthropophagic approach to epistemic justice, a valued theme in decolonial thinking. In doing so, this article contributes to the literature by proposing applicable and positive outcomes to critical and decolonizing thinking.

Actor-network theory: methodological issues in practice

“…It is worth mentioning other terms that were disseminated, especially in the first decade of the 2000s, in line with the principles of TS, but more conceptually specific such as "grassroot innovations"to highlight technologies that preserve nature, respecting biodiversity (Gupta et al, 2003); "social entrepreneurship"which presents several definitions and typologies and can be understood as actions taken to explore opportunities in order to provide social wealth in an innovative way (Zahra et al, 2009); "social innovation"which also has a heterogeneity of definitions and can be understood as "the result of knowledge applied to social needs through the participation and cooperation of all actors involved" (Bignetti, 2011, p. 4). We highlight that Saldanha et al (2022) propose an alternative to hegemonic ways of understanding social innovation through the Latin American concept of TS, embodying a decolonial view. In this perspective, the concept of socio-technical reconfiguration is presented as the process of the imbrication of social and material elements that constitute a TS.…”

“…, 2003); “social entrepreneurship” – which presents several definitions and typologies and can be understood as actions taken to explore opportunities in order to provide social wealth in an innovative way (Zahra et al ., 2009); “social innovation” – which also has a heterogeneity of definitions and can be understood as “the result of knowledge applied to social needs through the participation and cooperation of all actors involved” (Bignetti, 2011, p. 4). We highlight that Saldanha et al. (2022) propose an alternative to hegemonic ways of understanding social innovation through the Latin American concept of TS, embodying a decolonial view.…”